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  <title>Tar-based phars</title>
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    <li><a href="phar.fileformat.html">What makes a phar a phar and not a tar or a zip?</a></li>
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  <h2 class="title">Tar-based phars</h2>
  <p class="para">
   Archives based on the tar file format follow the more modern USTAR
   file format.  The design of the tar file header makes them more efficient
   to access than the zip file format, and almost as efficient as the phar
   file format.  File names are limited to 255 bytes, including
   full path within the phar archive.  There is no limit on the number of files
   within a tar-based phar archive.  These archives can fully compressed in
   gzip or bzip2 format and still be executed by the Phar extension.
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  <p class="para">
   There is limited support for reading tarballs in pax interchange format,
   but all recognized pax headers (currently, typeflag <code class="literal">x</code> and
   <code class="literal">g</code>) are silently ignored.
   There is also limited support for GNU Tar Archives;
   currently, <code class="literal">././@LongLink</code> headers are resolved.
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  <p class="para">
   To compress an entire archive, use <span class="function"><a href="phar.compress.html" class="function">Phar::compress()</a></span>.
   To decompress an entire archive, use <span class="function"><a href="phar.decompress.html" class="function">Phar::decompress()</a></span>.
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